Wayne I’m not planning to put a finish on it. The wood feels like it is covered in paraffin. When you sand it and the surface is white with the dust and sanding scratches. But you let it sit for a couple of days and it self heals. There are no more visible scratches and the brown returns.

It’s magic.

-- I've been blessed with a father who liked to tinker in wood, and a wife who lets me tinker in wood. Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †

The self healing properties were something that I just noticed. I had sanded off some pencil lines and was doing something else to the legs later and i noticed that the marks were gone. The wood is heavy, but sands real easy and splits real easy. I drilled the peg holes after I had cut the mortise slots and it was easy to split the wood as you got the peg hole close to the mortise slot. There will be a lot of places where there is not going to be great wood to wood contact. I’ll use Epoxy glue to glue it together to try and fill in some of the gaps.

It’s the oiliest wood that I’ve ever seen. It does clog up sandpaper quite fast. I don’t have any stearate paper so I don’t know if it would work better.

The blackwood pegs also are hard to sand to fit into the 3/8” holes. It is also oily, and has the charismatic rosewood smell. The blackwood is harder to sand than the Goncalo Alves. You have to press down hard and rub vigorously to remove just a little wood.

The blackwood pegs also clog up the sandpaper.

Mark: I made Obi’s out of my “Hunnert Dollar Black Walnut Board” so that it would look like the one that he was going to originally make. LOL.

-- I've been blessed with a father who liked to tinker in wood, and a wife who lets me tinker in wood. Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †